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How Prophecy Lives Religion and the Social Order An Official Publication of the Association for the Sociology of Religion General Editor William H. Swatos, Jr. VOLUME 21 How Prophecy Lives Edited by DianaG.TumminiaandWilliamH.Swatos,Jr. LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data How prophecy lives / edited by Diana G. Tumminia, William H. Swatos, Jr. p. cm. – (Religion and the social order, ISSN 1061-5210 ; v. 21) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-21560-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Prophecy. 2. Festinger, Leon, 1919-1989. When prophecy fails. I. Tumminia, Diana G. II. Swatos, William H. III. Title. IV. Series. BL633.H69 2011 202'.117–dc23 2011028607 ISSN 1061-5210 ISBN 978 90 04 21560 3 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS Preface: The Only Way into the Kingdom of God?.......................... vii William H. Swatos, Jr. Introduction: How Failure Succeeds.............................................. 1 Diana G. Tumminia 1. Revisiting When Prophecy Fails ................................................. 9 Benton Johnson 2. Where Prophecy Lives: Psychological and Sociological Studies of Cognitive Dissonance............................................................... 21 Ralph W.Hood, Jr. 3. The Festinger Theory on Failed Prophecy and Dissonance: A Survey and Critique.............................................................. 41 Jon R. Stone 4. Clearing the Underbrush: Moving beyond Festinger to a New Paradigm for the Study of Failed Prophecy................................. 69 Lorne L. Dawson 5. When Prophets Fail to Fail: A Case Study of Yuko Chino, Chino Shoho, and the Pana-Wave Laboratory....................................... 99 Salvador Jimenez Murguia 6. Leadership and the Impact of Failed Prophecies on New Religious Movements: The Case of the Church Universal and Triumphant............................................................................. 115 LorneL.DawsonandBradleyC.Whitsel 7. Failed Prophecy and Group Demise: The Case of Chen Tao......... 153 Stuart A. Wright and Arthur L. Greil vi contents 8. A Square Theory in a Round Reality: Thoughts on the Study of the Unarius Prophecy............................................................... 173 Diana G. Tumminia Afterword: The Sociology of Prophecy Sub Specie Æternitatis.......... 185 William H. Swatos, Jr. Contributors ............................................................................... 189 preface THE ONLY WAY INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD? William H. Swatos, Jr. As World War II events drew U.S. involvement ever closer, the Niebuhr brothers engaged in what became an important exchange in Christian Century for mid-twentieth century American religion. It involved the realist preacher Reinhold, sometimes called prophetic, arguing for Amer- ican involvement in the European theatre, while scholar Richard was a pacifist. Richard started it with “The Grace of Doing Nothing.” Rein- hold responded with “Must We Do Nothing?” Richard, however, won the debating point—if not the day—with the riposte: “The Only Way Into the Kingdom of God.”The events of history, of course, proved Richard wrong and Reinhold right, though Richard long outlived him, and so won the day in his own way by influencing another generation during the Viet Nam era. What do we make of prophecy? There is reason to think that prophecy exists in one form or another in every religion—or at least in every religion that perdures. In some religions it has a mystical or esoteric quality, while in others it carries more moral freight, which Max Weber would subdivide between the exemplary and ethical prophet in the carrying out of the task. As we come to look at this collection of assessments of prophecy principally in our own time, we see that prophetic kinds of religious expressions and experiences have perdured with amazing vigor—admittedly often in small-case settings—into the twenty-first century. While Phillips Brooks may have written correctly of the infant Jesus that “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,” tomor- row things can also be different. Neither Jesus nor any other figure of the world’s religions has ended the dynamism of new religious revelations— west, east, north, or south. And though Paul the apostle in his inimitable soliloquy on love (1Cor. 13) would state that, “whether there be prophecies, they shall fail,” even within Christianity “new prophets” arise—“to lead astray,” as Paul regretfully admits elsewhere, “even the elect.” Per- haps, indeed, instead of the whimper that T.S. Eliot puts at the end of the world, the reality will be one last prophet crying out, with no one to hear. viii william h. swatos, jr. Does the irony not strike you that the stimulus to over fifty years of social scientific research on prophecy began with a book called When Prophecy Fails? I couldn’t help but notice. But I might not have been so engaged by it if had not also been for the 2005 publication of Diana Tumminia’s When Prophecy Never Fails. I had followed Diana’s work for about fifteen years by the time that When Prophecy Fails turned fifty in 2006, and the juxtaposition of these two publication events seemed just too good to pass up. Together we organized two sessions at that fall’s RRA/SSSR meetings, and out of them the present volume began to emerge. Progress often comes more slowly than one would like, but work- ing with our colleagues who have contributed chapters to this volume— some of which come directly out of those sessions—we offer now both a summary assessment and forward look at prophecy research. introduction HOW FAILURE SUCCEEDS Diana G. Tumminia In 1956 Leon Festinger and two of his graduate students published a case study of a flying-saucer group whose leader’s prophetic pronounce- ments had failed to be fulfilled: When Prophecy Fails. Mrs. Keech, the pseudonym for the prophet, seemed like an anomaly then. Although the book received relatively limited coverage at the time of its publication, the burgeoning field of new religious movements (NRMs), often referred to at the time as “cults,” that began to appear as a significant movement in the United States and other parts of the world about a decade after the publication of When Prophecy Fails drew considerable attention to the book—especially with respect to its theory of prophetic disconfirma- tion. Intensive and extensive debate over the nature of NRMs and their expected outcomes have centered upon what came to be known through- out the field as “the Festinger thesis.” The fiftieth anniversary of this book’s publication provided an oppor- tunity for a number of scholars in the social scientific study of religion and the study of NRMs to reflect on various aspects of this book and on both the general corpus of data that has grown from the thesis, as well as new case study materials. This volume brings together these analy- ses from different perspectives. The editors acknowledge the early par- ticipants, Jon R. Stone (in absentia), Ralph W. Hood, Jr., and Benton Johnson, who read their original papers at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) and the Religious Research Association (RRA) meetings for the “Festinger at Fifty” session, which convened in Port- land, Oregon during September 2006. Some of the authors, including myself, subsequently and unexpectedly experienced the loss of spouses andotherlovedoneswhosedeathsoccurredduringthemakingofthis book. These profound events affected the timeliness of the publication, which had been originally considered possible in much closer succes- sion to the 50th anniversary of the publication of When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W.Riecken and Stanley S. Schachter. So despite personal loss for some and the overscheduled, overworked lives of many 2 diana g. tumminia of our authors, we finally came together to finish the project. Co-editor WilliamH.Swatos,Jr.shouldbeacknowledgedfirstforkeepingthefaith during all those uncertain times. When Prophecy Fails still inspires students of social psychology and religion, as well as aging professors who ponder its genius and its contra- dictions. Although many chapters in the present volume may critique this classic, we as researchers all stood on the wide shoulders of Festinger et al. (1956) while conducting our investigations into groups with prophecies. From my standpoint, our book emerges more from homage than over- done criticism, more from appreciation than fault finding. It is intended both for specialists in the field and for those who seek a general social scientific evaluation of the growth and decline of religious movements in our time. Each chapter adds to the diversity of views on When Prophecy Fails anditsrelatedissues. ANodtoFestingeret al. Leon Festinger will always be remembered in social

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